


When You Believe In A Thing. Believe In It All The Way.

by This_ape_writes



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Artist Steve Rogers, Best Friends, Gen, Hugs, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Spoilers for all three captain America movies, cursing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-22
Updated: 2017-03-22
Packaged: 2018-10-09 07:29:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10406991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/This_ape_writes/pseuds/This_ape_writes
Summary: Bucky has ALWAYS believed in Steve. It's the only constant in the universe.OrThree scenes of their friendship that revolve around Steve and art.





	

"Friday night we're going out."

Steve frowns at the burning mouthful of soup he is stubbornly trying to eat too fast and gulps it down quickly. Maybe at least he'll get burned faster that way, he thinks, since it's already in his mouth and too late to spit it out. 

It doesn't really make it better and as soon as his mouth is empty and scalded he waves his hand at it and sighs. 

"Who are you fixing me up with this time," he asks as he scoops up another spoonful of soup and holds it in the air as he does his level best to be patient with this mouthful and actually wait for it to cool. He glances behind his spoon to take in Bucky who is sitting sideways in his chair ignoring his soup all together as he stares at the newspaper in his hands. Bucky turns his mouth down in his silent way of disagreeing with Steve's statement and he shakes his head. 

"I'm not fixing you up with anyone. Just me and you. We're going out." 

Steve tips one of his eyebrows in the air and shoves the spoonful of soup in his mouth just to once again be scalded, wince and swallow too fast. 

"To do what?" Steve asks. Bucky doesn't look up from the paper but reaches across the table to latch his fingers around the edge of Steve's bowl and drag it smoothly to his side. 

"It's a surprise. And I ain't having you complain about a blistered mouth. Just calm down and give it a bit to cool," Bucky mutters. Steve sighs. 

"I got homework," he says as if that will excuse his impatience. Bucky shrugs. 

"So do that now and eat after," he says. Steve frowns and reaches across to drag his bowl right back. 

"No. Once I get started painting I don't want to stop. I'll just...I'll be patient and let it cool," he says. Bucky glances at him with a bored look. 

They both know he's lying. 

So several burns later and with dinner cleaned away, Steve drags out the watercolor he is hate painting for one of his classes with a scowl and frustrated sigh. Every few seconds he rattles his paintbrush against the sides of the mug full of water just to add paint, sigh, and rattle it around to clean it back off again. He interrupts his irritation to let his arms drop to his sides with a small thump. 

"We aren't going dancing are we?" he asks. 

"Tonight?" Bucky asks from where he's plopped on the couch pretending not to watch Steve work. "Bit late to start."  
Steve rolls his eyes.

"Friday. Because the only thing worse than a forced double date is sitting watching you pick up girls at a dance hall while the whole room ignores I exist," Steve mutters. Bucky chuckles. 

"That ain't at all what happens, you're being dramatic but no. We aren't goin' dancing. Happy?" he asks. Steve shrugs and turns his painting completely upside down as he dries off his brush as much as he can and adds a few dots of red to the top. Or, well, what will actually be the bottom once it's right side up again. 

"We can't afford dinner out," he mutters. 

"We could if you want," Bucky says. The paint brush clinks against the insides of the mug again on each side back and forth as the paint turns the water into brown sludge. 

"Where are we going?" Steve asks. 

"Oh. I'm so sorry. See Stevie how a surprise works is that you don't know what's happening until it happens and then you're surprised when it does. I forgot they don't teach highly intellectual things like that at that fancy art school of yours. My bad," he teases. Steve turns around from the kitchen table to stare at Bucky with an unimpressed look on his face and with one quick flick, paint flies across the short distance between them and all over Bucky's face. 

He gives out an indignant yelp and laughs. 

"You're gonna wreck the couch!" he says. Steve smirks at that. 

 

Oh yes. Their fancy couch. They had salvaged it from a neighbor that had left it behind in a move and it was probably older than their grandparents. It listed to the left in a sad slump, one arm was barely hanging on for dear life, and neither one of them knew exactly what color it had been originally. 

"Well it is super fancy Buck, you're right. A few drops of water soluble paint is really gonna make it drop in value," he says. Bucky chuckles at him and shakes his head. 

"Well can I at least see the work of art that's destroying our couch?" he asks as he leans forward to rest his arms against his knees. Steve groans. 

"Yes but it's awful. I hate watercolor. It doesn't fucking behave itself. It just does whatever it feels like," Steve says. 

"Huh. That sounds like someone I know," Bucky says. 

"I'm not afraid to punch you Barnes, I'm really not," Steve says in a flat voice. Bucky smirks at him but pushes himself to his feet so he can get a better look at the painting. Steve flips it right side up again and Bucky just barely keeps himself from gasping. 

"It's Manhattan," he says in an awed voice as he pulls a chair out with a scrape against the floor and sits down next to Steve. 

"You can tell?" Steve asks, obvious in his shock as he tilts his head to look at the painting too. 

"Of co...why would I not be able to tell!? It looks exactly like the view from the bakery down off the water," Bucky says, his voice catching a distracted tone to it as he folds his arms in on each other and leans into the table to get a better look. Sharp red and orange and yellow lines give the sky a look of the sun setting behind everything and it's highly stylized with buildings laying at odd angles against each other with crisp dark edges but it is absolutely the skyline of Manhattan. The Brooklyn bridge clips just one corner and Bucky is fairly certain it's the most mesmerizing thing he's ever seen. 

"Can we hang it up?" Bucky asks. Steve snorts. 

"What like on the fridge?" he asks and Bucky shakes his head. 

"Wherever. It's beautiful," he says. Steve rolls his eyes and drops the painting against the table. 

"Ok stop buttering me up with lies there Buck. Are you taking me some place I'm gonna hate worse than a dance hall on Friday so you gotta get me in a good mood now or something," he asks. Bucky frowns, confused by Steve's statement and shakes his head. 

"I'm not lying. It is beautiful and why would I take you someplace you hated as a surprise and where on earth would that even BE?" Bucky asks. Steve shrugs. 

"I don't know. Maybe you're having me committed to an insane asylum because you're sick of me and don't know what else to do." Bucky lets out an offended scoff. 

"I'm not even going to acknowledge a statement that ridiculous. And once you get the highest grade in the class for that painting bring it back home. I'm serious, it's going on the wall."

Steve makes a face and shakes his head. 

"Oh goodie. Then I can stare every day at my failure. Thanks Buck. I appreciate that." 

"It's beautiful. Stop being dumb. I'm going to bed." Steve shakes his head again but as Bucky stands up he catches glimpse of a tiny flicker of a smile as Steve looks over his painting again. 

"Hey," Steve says as he turns around in his chair and rests his arms in the back rungs of it. 

"Hmm?" Bucky says, stopping in the living room. 

"Are you in with some kind of fucked up shit that makes you need to leave the country? Cuz I'll go with you even if you're a fugitive but I wanna request hiding out someplace warm. Like Texas."

Bucky laughs. 

"Ok first off potty mouth I am not in some 'fucked up shit'. Second of all Texas is part of THIS country you idiot. And for the last time it's a good surprise! Jeez," he mutters as he heads off to bed. 

"Alright but just remember I said to run someplace warm when we do go on the lam," Steve yells. 

After a beat, a balled up dirty sock hits him in the back of the head.

 

***

"This is ridiculous," Steve laughs. 

"It's not ridiculous it's a surprise. Slow down," Bucky says as he stutters his steps so that he can keep one hand anchored to Steve's shoulder and the other hand clamped tight over his eyes. Steve huffs out a snorting sound. 

"You're gonna have to show me where we're going eventually. Is keeping me in suspense an extra twenty seconds really gonna make or break this thing?" 

"I swear to god I have never heard someone complain so much about someone doing something nice for them before," Bucky mutters but it dissolves into a laugh as they both stumble a little bit and keep walking. 

"It's cold and I don't like not knowing stuff," Steve whines. 

"Fine we're here. Jeez," Bucky says as he drops his hands. He watches as Steve blinks and looks up and chuckles. 

"The movies?" Steve says. "Not that it's not fun and all but we go to the movies a lot." 

"Not to this movie we don't," Bucky says as he urges them both forward and Steve frowns as he leans back so that he can read the marquee above their heads. He lets out a quiet huff of a laugh when he reads it and when Bucky glances over at Steve he sees that he is giving him an awkward smile, his eyes dropped down to the ground. 

"I was gonna go by myself Buck you didn't have to come with me," Steve says in a low voice that Bucky has to struggle to hear. 

"What and miss a movie you described as 'a groundbreaking artistic achievement'? Why would I do that?" Bucky asks as he plunks down money and holds up two fingers to the woman behind the glass of the ticket booth. Steve flicks his hair away from his eyes and curls into himself as he digs his hands into his pockets against the sharp February wind. 

"I was talking to myself when I said that. I was...it might be boring. I mean it's one thing to have an animated cartoon for two minutes. This one is a whole hour and a half..." 

"Shut up and stop trying to talk me out of this. It's done," Bucky says with a flashed smile and wink in to the ticket booth agent as he takes the tickets offered to him and pushes on Steve's arm to make him move inside. 

The theater is almost full but they find two seats at the end of a row and settle in as the newsreels start. Steve throws out a few more whispered objections to being here but they are half hearted at best and he loses himself in the news before he can really argue that Bucky should go home. 

It's not long before the movie starts with a book fanning open on the screen introducing the story of Snow White. Trees that look like a three dimensional painting appear on the screen and they are pulled through them to a beautiful castle. Bucky hears a short intake of breath next to him and he can't help but look over at Steve who is staring with wide eyes and a slack jaw at what unfolds in front of them. Bucky grins to himself and settles in. 

He wouldn't have missed this for anything. 

The movie isn't even boring. It has a good plot and catchy music and it even manages to occasionally pull Bucky's attention away from Steve.

He cheers along with the rest of the audience when the evil queen falls off a cliff and he is absolutely not grinning when he prince sweeps Snow White onto his horse at the end. 

The credits roll and everyone around them stand and gather their jackets and hats but Steve makes no move to leave yet so Bucky stays put. 

They are the only ones left in the empty theater after it's all said and done and Bucky grins at Steve who is sitting perfectly still, lost in his own head. He doesn't interrupt him. He is content to just sit as long as Steve does. Steve looks a bit dazed and all in all it feels like the surprise was a success. 

Bucky watches Steve carefully as he starts to shake his head. 

"I want to do something like that," he says in a quiet voice. Bucky shifts in his chair so he's sitting sideways and rests his arm along the back of it as he curls one leg up on his seat next to him. 

"Really? With cartoons?" Bucky asks. Steve shrugs. 

Wouldn't have to be exactly that I guess. Just..." his eyebrows slide into a frown and he chews at the inside edge of his lower lip. "That was beautiful. How great would it be to make something like that." Bucky grins. 

"Well...since I was floored by something you made that you considered a failure I'd say you're kinda on the right path toward making all kinds of things that are that beautiful, you just can't see it," he says. 

Steve closes his eyes and huffs a laugh as he shakes his head. 

"You believe in me way too much Buck," Steve says in a quiet voice. 

"No. From the very second I first met you when you were only five years old and looking to take on four bullies at once? I learned right then never to underestimate Steven Grant Rogers. And I don't intend to start underestimating anything that you do now," Bucky says. Steve looks up at him and shakes his head but he's smiling. 

"You're an idiot," he says. 

"Yeah maybe. But I still say you're on that path. And I wholeheartedly believe that." 

***

But even the best planned paths can get knocked completely off course. 

War has a way of making that happen. 

Draft papers. 

An awkward hug and an idle threat to not do anything stupid. 

And then months of cold. 

Fear. 

And more pain that he was aware that he could withstand. 

He knows it's all over, but it doesn't stop the dreams that he could have made it back home. 

It almost makes him cry. But he can't stop death. 

It's too late. 

It's coming. 

Except that his path toward dying is derailed as well. 

His little best friend who has dreams of making beauty in the world that he has left back home safely in Brooklyn is suddenly standing over him, impossibly tall and wide like he's never been before and dragging him out of explosions. 

It's disorienting. 

And confusing. 

And wrong. 

And he must have died. 

But impossibly he didn't. 

And when he settles back into being counted with the living he sits on a cot watching his best friend lounge against the wall behind his own cot across the room, his head bent over and his hand sliding in smooth motions as he draws. If it wasn't so dark and miserable he'd swear he was right back home again. 

"What're you making?" he asks as he rests elbows against knees and tries to focus his mind on the here and now. 

Steve looks up and a familiar grin lights up his newly unfamiliar face and he motions with his head and pats the bed next to him as an open invitation to show him the answer to his question. 

To spite every muscle aching and his body screaming at him not to move, Bucky pushes to his feet and shuffles a few steps forward to collapse next to Steve in a heavy thump. Steve tilts his sketchbook so that he can see what his pencil had been creating and is a little startled to see his own face staring back at him from the page. 

"Me?" he asks with the minimum volume a voice can carry and not be categorized as a whisper. Steve nods with a shoulder shrug tipped into the air. 

"Sure," Steve says as he resumes his work. He stares at the pencil movements. Unable to even blink. 

And it's not a consciously planned decision but he's so tired and wrung out that his head finds Steve's shoulder before he can make it stop. 

Steve doesn't even twitch. 

He just lets Bucky lean into him with all of his weight and keeps right on drawing like this sort of thing happens all the time. 

"I thought I was dead," he admits into the room. 

His eyes finally blink when he feels Steve's head lean into his own and he can tell from the tiny changes in pressure against his hair that Steve is nodding. 

"I know. I thought you were too," Steve says. 

The pencil slides into the curve of his ear on the paper and up into the line of his hair and he takes a deep breath into his lungs just to prove to them both that it's still possible. 

And as unfamiliar as his best friend is now, in this weird towering body, he still feels him in there somewhere. 

"What happened to creating something beautiful," Bucky asks. 

"I am," Steve says as he waves a hand at the page. "And stop fishing for compliments Barnes," Steve jokes with a laugh. And Bucky breathes in a quick breath of shock as Steve chuckles. 

"No I didn't..." he protests but Steve stops him with a laugh. 

"Stop. I'm sort of joking," Steve says with a quirked smile as he continues to draw. 

Bucky blinks and can't quite come up with a response. So he changes the subject instead

"This is a new sketchbook," he says. He doesn't recognize it at all but then again it's been almost a whole year since he last watched Steve draw anything. 

"Mhmm," Steve says as he flips it closed and stares at the cover. "I got it when I first started traveling here in Europe." He flips through a few pages with a flick of his thumb. Bucky sees a woman in a costume, a crowd of empty faces. A utility Jeep, and a few mountains and trees as the pages fwip past. He stops Steve's movements with one of his fingers. He is slow and sluggish and he has to flip back a few pages to get to where he wanted Steve to stop. It's smudged with a few rain drops but something about the picture makes him hurt. A monkey on a tightrope. And he recognizes the shield and the outfit it's wearing. He wants to ask about it. What it means to Steve. But he doesn't. 

Steve answers anyway. 

"I wasn't doing any good. I thought I was. At first anyway. I was helping raise money and I got some attention out of the deal which was nice but..." Steve sighs and drops his head back against the wall behind them. Bucky still can't move from his shoulder so he tips back a little bit with him and waits for Steve to go on. 

"Suddenly I was with real soldiers. Real in a way that you are and I wasn't and it just felt so god damned fake and worthless." 

"Like a circus act," Bucky adds in a voice that's rough and slow. 

"Like a circus act," Steve admits. "But if I hadn't felt that low it might not have sparked a hard enough anger in me to go after you into enemy territory with a prop hat and no back up so maybe it had a purpose." Bucky snorts. 

"You're a lot of things Stevie but short of righteous anger ain't one of them. I doubt you needed a push." Steve huffs out a laugh. "But thank you. I didn't actually say that before but I...you saved my life." Steve shrugs under his cheek. 

"I still owe YOU about a million before we're squared up," he says. "Besides I dove into there to save you for purely selfish reasons because there is no way I was going on without you. I can't."

And he means to ask Steve where the hell that kind of talk is coming from. He means to ask him what he really means. He means to ask about a hundred other things, including what he meant when he said he had a 'prop hat' in the rescue, he swears he wants to ask them, but he doesn't do anything but close his eyes and before he knows it he's drifted to sleep. 

***

He doesn't get the chance to see Steve draw again. 

***

He's dead. 

And then he's not. 

And then he doesn't know he's missing anything because he has no idea who Steve even is. 

And if he thought he'd reached his limits of pain that his body could endure before he had another thing coming. 

Everything becomes unbearable and awful until nothing is awful at all. 

It's just empty. 

And numb. 

And then he almost kills Steve. 

Not that he recognizes him until it's a split second away from being too late. 

And for months after, when he doesn't sleep and can't remember to eat or bathe, he thinks about that split second. 

He has so many wounds but that one is constantly at the top of the pile. 

Just one fraction of a second later. 

A pause. 

A breath. 

And he'd have lost Steve forever. 

And he'd have had no idea. 

And he wishes he could scream until it all goes black. 

And then he starts to remember. 

And when he stands in his kitchen staring at the back of Steve's head as he flips through one of his notebooks from the fridge, he has a flash of a memory of Steve drawing him from a hard cot from another lifetime. 

But when Steve turns around and asks him if he knows who he is he feels like he can't honestly say yes. It feels like something he studied from a textbook not something he actually remembers in his head, so he tells him he read about him in a museum which is half of the truth and he notices when Steve's face twitches down in disappointment. 

He wonders for a moment how many sketchbooks he's missed but he doesn't get the chance to ask. 

Not until all hell has broken loose, Steve has ruined his own life for him losing everything that makes him who he is while Bucky loses an arm. 

But they still impossibly have each other.

Which is something they didn't have for a very long time. 

***

He is in a t shirt and sweats because he can finally choose what he wears now and all of those choices end with 'soft' and 'softer' and he is sitting on the concrete of a patio and leaning his forehead on the glass of the railing on the edge. He looks out over trees that are blurring together in to incoherent green as he lets his eyes relax when he hears the door slide open behind him. 

He doesn't need to turn to know that it's Steve behind him. 

"We finally ran someplace warm," Bucky says as Steve drops down next to him on the ground and settles in.

"I'm sorry?" Steve asks. 

"You said when we went on the lam to go someplace warm," Bucky says as he gestures in front of him his forehead still against the glass. "We ran someplace warm." 

Steve looks confused for a few moments and then his face breaks into a giant laugh that makes Bucky jump but smile along with him. 

"That's what you remember?!" Steve says and Bucky shrugs. 

"I can't control what my brain holds on to asshole," he says. And Steve grins. 

Steve shakes his head and turns to look out through he glass at the trees below and Bucky asks before he can think not to. 

"What was the last thing you drew?" 

He focuses his eyes again and rolls his forehead against the glass so that he can look over at Steve who looks shocked and then confused and then sad. 

"Oh," he says. 

Which isn't an answer. 

But in a way it kinda is. 

Bucky swallows. 

"You haven't drawn in this century have you," he asks. Steve looks for a second like he might try and lie to him but he must change his mind because his shoulders go limp and he shakes his head. 

"No. I haven't," he says. Bucky leans heavier into the glass and hopes it's stronger than it feels as he frowns. 

"Why?" he asks as he folds his arm in to rest against his leg. Steve's eyes drop and he frowns a little, but it doesn't seem to be because he's upset about the question. More that he's trying very hard to find the answer. 

"I was..." he starts but he stops with a tiny head shake. Bucky doesn't attempt to ask anything more to prod Steve to keep talking. He's content to let Steve take his time. Or to not answer at all. That would be ok too. He doesn't think he was always this way but he feels like he is slower now, not in a rush for anything to happen. 

Maybe that's just because he can be. 

He can chose to do that now. 

"Two weeks after I woke up," Steve finally says, "Robots from outer space attacked Manhattan controlled by the fuc...the stupid tessarect."

"Robots. From outer space," Bucky says with a raised eyebrow and a quirked grin on his lips. Steve nods. 

"Yeah. Robots from outer space controlled by the device I flew a plane into the ocean to destroy. I gave up my LIFE to destroy. Two god..." and Steve looks like he's struggling for words as his jaw clenched and his lips thin into a tight line. But then he sighs and drops his head. "Two weeks," he says again. 

"Did you just stop yourself from cursing?" Bucky asks. Steve shrugs. 

"It's an image thing," he says. "I've...I don't know." 

"Well cut it out. Enough things have changed I don't need that to be one of them." 

Steve blinks up at him and huffs out a laugh. 

"Oh fuck you Barnes," he says with only a tiny flinch. Bucky gives him a full wide smile. 

"Much better! Sorry I feel like I interrupted a story," Bucky says as he lets his smile slide away. "You were telling me why you don't draw anymore I think." Steve nods. 

"Robot aliens from outer space. And mutants and machines and hydra and..." he looks down at his hands. "...and you." He shakes his head. "Plus nothing made sense for a very long time. I was alone and depressed and in a constant state of emergency. I stopped sleeping. I missed you so damn much. I told myself I was just busy and didn't have time to draw but the truth was it just hurt too much to even try." 

"Why?" Bucky asks. Steve shrugs. 

"That was the old me. He died when you did," he says. 

Bucky takes a deep breath and nods even though Steve isn't looking at him to see. 

"But I'm not dead," he says before he can stop himself. It just pops in his head and he says it. Steve moves slow but looks up at him and he really stops to consider that statement. He watches as Steve's eyes scan their way across his own face. And then bit by tiny bit he watches as a smile takes hold of Steve's face. Steve swallows and shakes his head. 

"No you're not," he says. 

And before he can tell himself not to and without even lifting his head off the glass he slides his arm off of his knee and reaches the short distance between them to grab Steve's hand as hard as he can. 

"I missed you too," Bucky says. "For a very very very long time." Steve nods and grips his hand back. 

He smiles at Bucky but it's tight and off. He watches as Steve begins chewing on his lip and Steve chuckles as he shakes his head. 

"Ok I'm gonna lose my shit here but don't let that go to your head at all. It doesn't mean a god damned thing, you hear me?" he says as his eyes go shiny and swallowing becomes difficult for him to do. And Bucky grins. 

"I made you curse again and cry in just one conversation how can that NOT go to my head," he teases. And Steve bursts out in a full laugh as a tear slides down his nose only to be quickly swiped away. 

"Yeah well fuck you," Steve says. And Bucky smiles and squeezes Steve's fingers. 

They don't move much the rest of the night. 

***

The king of Wakanda has been extraordinarily generous. Bucky has been asked several times each day if there is anything at all that he needs. He finds it irritating and grating but mostly because he can't think of how to answer that question. 

But he knows what he needs now. 

He just has to wait for them to bring it. 

*** 

He has to use google. 

And his writing is awful now that his dominant hand has been torn off. 

It takes far too much concentration and his fingers ache by the time he's done but he feels something he thinks might be happiness when he looks at his handy work and he can't wait to show it to Steve. 

***

He waits for the next morning when Steve is half asleep inside of a mug of lukewarm coffee when he sets the wrapped gift on the table and slides it in front of Steve. 

Steve blinks down in confusion and has the eloquent ability to say, 

"Huh?" 

Bucky laughs. 

"It's a surprise. And we both know how much you love those," he says. Steve huffs out a laugh that turns into a yawn that he tries and fails to stifle. 

"So what is it?" Steve asks. 

"Open it," Bucky says. And Steve sighs and reaches across the table to slide the box closer so he can tear off the paper on the outside. He frowns down at a box of pencils he picks up off the top and he huffs out a laugh when he picks up a leather bound sketchbook underneath. 

"Buck, you really didn't have to," he says as he picks the book up and lets the pages ruffle open with his thumb. 

Something catches his attention and he drops the book on the table so he can flip back a few pages to the front. 

He frowns and then reads what's written inside, out loud. 

"'When you believe in a thing. Believe in it all the way. Implicitly and unquestionable'-Walt Disney," he reads, his voice losing power and trailing off at the end as he closes his mouth and stares at the page. 

Bucky leans over the table and taps his finger against the page. 

"That's you pal," he says. And Steve frowns harder as he blinks and looks up. 

"What?" he asks. Bucky swallows and shrugs his shoulder. 

"I've been through too much shit. And nothing I thought I believed, makes any damn sense to me now. Except you." Steve's eyes blink wider. "Implicitly and unquestionable. Whether it's the you now who feels kinda lost and fought robots from space..."

Steve laughs. 

"Or the you who rescued me single handedly when the army only saw a monkey. Or the you who wanted nothing more than to make something beautiful in the world. I believe in you in all of those. That's all I've got but," Bucky shrugs. "You have never failed me. So this is to remind you to believe in all of you to." 

He doesn't get a chance to complete his thought and Steve has knocked over his chair in a rush to stand and before he can stop him Steve is hugging Bucky as tight as he can and laughing and crying in equal parts as Bucky tries to understand what the hell is happening. 

"You asshole. It's perfect. I love it. I love YOU. You always know exactly what I need and I fucking hate that you can do that because I don't really hate it but I want to. Thank you I just... thank you Bucky. I hope you know I believe in you too." 

The wide arms of his best friend hug him a little bit tighter and he can't help the smile he finds on his face. He's quite positive that he hasn't had anyone hug him since Steve last picked up a pencil and it's awkward and at a weird angle and he's only got one arm to join in. 

But it might be the best thing he can remember ever feeling. 

And he thinks maybe, just maybe they might both be ok.

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm and artist and when I went to see Monsters University the short beforehand just hit me. It was just so beautiful and realistic and I burst into tears and cried through the whole thing thinking god I wish I was a part of making something like that. 
> 
> So then I re-fell into a Captain America hole again and realized not only did Steve go to art school but that he was in art school the year Snow White was released in theaters and there was no way my head was gonna let the idea of Artist Steve seeingbthe very first feature animated film and not loving everything about it. 
> 
> Then it spiraled and this.


End file.
